China’s done it again, delivering another world-record breaking construction effort. This time around, it floats, and is at present on its way from Jiangsu to the North Sea where it will help in delivering renewable energy to millions of British homes.
On 20 December, the Voltaire, a wind turbine installation vessel, set sail from Qidong in Nantong City of Jiangsu Province, destination Dogger Bank in the North Sea, where the world’s largest offshore wind farm is under construction.
As The Paper reports, the Voltaire was built by Jiangsu Qidong COSCO Marine Engineering. With its client the Belgium-based Jan De Nul Group, the Voltaire’s four 130-metre-high legs can extend beneath the ship to the sea bed, providing stability for its crane operations. That stability is crucial, since the Voltaire’s main crane is capable of lifting weights of over 3,200 tons.
This makes it the biggest and tallest jack-up ship of its kind in the world. Or as the Dogger Bank Wind Farm website puts it, “At its highest extended point, the Voltaire turbine installation vessel stands taller than the Eiffel Tower”. At 325 metres, that’s one metre taller to be exact.
Named after the pioneering European Enlightenment philosopher, the Voltaire is also the first ship of its kind to meet Euro 5 emission standards. That’s thanks to a sophisticated exhaust filtering system which employs a Selective Catalytic Reduction system and a Diesel Particulate Filter.
Phase 1 Dogger Bank is set to begin supplying electricity after the Voltaire has been put through its paces sometime next year. And it has quite a job ahead of it, with the primary task to install all 277 of the Wind Farm’s turbines across its three phases.
Located 130 kilometres off the coast of northeast England, the scale of Dogger Bank is breathtaking, with the Wind Farm’s turbines occupying an area extending another 60 kilometres out into the North Sea.
When complete, Dogger Bank Wind Farm will boast an installed capacity of 3.6 gigawatts, meaning it could provide electricity for up to six million UK homes. With blades 107-metres long, just one rotation of one turbine shall be able to power a British home for 2 days. Unsurprisingly, all this will make Dogger Bank Britain’s largest single source of renewable energy, satisfying 5 percent of the country’s demand for electricity.
The Wind Farm takes its name from it being located on an isolated sandbank in the North Sea once known as Doggerland. Prior to it becoming an island as sea levels rose after the last ice age, the area was in fact a land bridge connecting present-day Europe with Britain.
When the Voltaire arrives in the waters over what was once Doggerland, the moment shall be about a lot more than a ship starting work. Its arrival will also help cement friendly UK-China relations and signify to the world concrete steps in the commitments being taken on both sides to a future powered by sustainable energy.
